Outlander - Bk 1 Author:Diana Gabaldon The year in 1945 and Claire Beauchamp Randall, the former British combat nurse, is on holiday in Scotland with her husband, looking forward to becoming reacquainted after the war's long separation. Like most practical women, Claire hardly expects her curiosity to get the better of her. But an ancient stone circle near her lodgings holds an e... more »erie fascination, and when she innocently touches a corner of one of the giant boulders, she is hurtled backward in time more than two hundred years, to 1743.
The past is a very different country, boiling with rumors of the Jacobite Pretender's Rising, beset with ignorance and superstition, ravaged by pestilence and disease. Alone where no lady should be alone, and far from the familiar comforts of her other life, Claire's usual resourcefulness is tested to the limit. The merciless English garrison captain so feared by others bears a disturbing resemblance to the husband she just left behind. Her own odd appearance and even odder behavior expose her to accusations of witchcraft. And the strands of political intrigue she doesn't understand threaten to ensnare her at every turn.
Determined to make the best of things, Claire uses her nurse's training to help heal the sick, her wits to foil those who would brand her a spy, and her humor and courage to disarm any would-be captors. Struggling to keep the all-too-present past at bay, she plots to return to the stone circle, and home.
But of all the perils Claire's new life hold, none is more disquieting than her growing feelings for James Fraser, the gallant young soldier she is forced to marry for her own protection. Sworn by his wedding vows to keep her from harm, Jamie's passion for Claire goes beyond duty. The emotions between them are stronger, and far more real, than anything she has ever known. As she struggles with the memory of another life-indeed, another husband-Claire is forced to choose between the future she has left and the past she now inhabits. And, having been plunged into an adventure that is at once unimaginably bizarre and unmistakably real, she learns an unforgettable lesson: that a man's instinct to protect the woman he loves is as old as time.« less